Interactive Video Game Console

A video game console is an interactive entertainment computer device that helps in producing video display signals, which can be seen by attaching a display device with the console. The device can be a television or a monitor. This video device will help in playing the video game. The basic purpose of giving this console the name of video game console is to distinguish it from the computers, which are bought for the use in businesses and educational institutions, but then are used for other purposes as well, as the consumers start using their computers for playing games, but video game console is solely manufactured for playing video games.

Fairchild was the first company, which used the term ‘console’, in order to refer its official video game system, with the Video Entertainment System, in the year of 1976. Since that point of time, this term is covering wider aspects and is covering many systems including alternative platforms TV games, handheld game consoles and various other media devices. Commonly the term ‘console’ refers to the specialized device, which is connected with a standard television or to a composite video monitor. Handheld gaming devices are highly in demand, as these are self contained electronic devices, which can easily be held in the hands of the users. The common elements of video game console include controllers, power supply, console core unit, game media and memory card. The function of these elements is described precisely below;

• Memory cards act like flash drives for the gaming consoles. Play Station and Game CUbe are the gaming consoles which have memory card, for the purpose of saving, loading and deleting files and data, but the recently released gaming consoles like PlayStation3, Xbox and Wii comes with internal memory cards/hard drives, which automatically saves data on the consoles.
• The programs of many game consoles are stored in the external memory, which are known as ROM of these consoles.
• The console unit, which is also known as core unit, is the hub of the gaming console, where the controllers of video game, television and game program are connected. Usually the core units contain audiovisual coprocessor, RAM and CPU and they are similar to the towers of PC’s.
• The function of power supply is to convert AC utility power into DC, according to the required voltages of the electronics.
• In order to interact with the onscreen objects and to input information, the controller devices are used, these devices are similar to the joysticks and keyboards of PC’s.

Till 1972, there were no actual video games, but the vector display games were introduced in 1950’s, which were simple and ordinary computer games, but Magnavox released first video game in 1972, which was called Magnavox Odyssey. Ralph H Baer invented this video game console. This game was not as successful, as the Atari’s arcade game, Pong helped in attracting the attention of the consumers. This game console helped in the development of this industry. Pong and various other Pong derived games flooded the markets. These games were the part of the first generation.

Later on, in the second generation, Fairchild released the Fairchild Video Entertainment System (VES) in the year of 1976. This console contained a programmable microprocessor, which makes its storage activity very simple and accurate. This chip helps the cartridges and in this way they only need one single ROM chip for the purpose of storing microprocessor’s instructions.

The year of 1977 was not so encouraging and successful for the manufacturers of game consoles, as the manufacturers of many old and obsolete consoles sold their "gaming consoles" in the market at highly less price and it resulted in the glut in the markets, which had a bad impact on the sales of Fairchild and RCA and resultantly they abandoned their sales in the markets. At that time only Atari and Magnavox could stay and survive in the home console markets.

In the year of 1983, the third generation video consoles were released in the markets, as Nintendo released Family Computer in the markets of Japan. Just like the ColecoVision, Family Computer/Femicom was capable of supporting tiled backgrounds and high-resolution sprites. Nintendo brought their same console to the markets of America, with the name of Nintendo Entertainment System, in the year of 1985. Nintendo got excellent response by the consumers of America and the gaming consoles of Nintendo helped a lot in the development of the video game industry. The release of Super Mario Bros, by Nintendo, gave this brand a breakthrough success and many new consoles were introduced in a row, in order to compete with NES.

In fourth generation of video game console, Sega worked hard to regain its share n the markets and released Sega Mega Drive. This console was released in Japan, on 29th October 1988, in US in august 1989 and in the markets of Europe in 1990. This console was released just two years before the release of Nintendo’s Super Nintendo Entertainment System (SNES).

Atari Jaguar and 3DO was the first consoles of the fifth generation. Both these consoles were much more efficient and technically strong than SNES. The sixth generation of consoles saw more innovative and amazing gaming consoles, which were like PC architecture gaming consoles. These consoles used DVD for game media and the games of these consoles were visually attractive, longer than all the previous games. Unlike all the six generations, the seventh generation brought in amazing and innovative changes in the features and functions of game consoles. These consoles supported new disc formats like Blu-ray Disc and HD DVD, which were supported by PlayStation3 and Xbox 360. All the seven generations brought some real gaming devices, especially for home video game markets.

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